


February in the Wastes

by vaultie



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Blind Betrayal spoilers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Long Road Ahead Spoilers, Main quest spoilers, Masturbation, Sexual Content, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:50:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5547980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaultie/pseuds/vaultie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stared up at him with a cocky grin and a raised eyebrow. “Whatever your heart desires.”</p><p>“Yeah, sure,” he said. “My heart. That’s a good one.”</p><p>[Sole Survivor Georgia's complicated relationships with Paladin Danse and MacCready. A whole lotta angst and now some smut in the mix.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Listening Post Bravo

“I need you to find something for me,” he said, finally breaking the silence. She jolted up. It was the first time either of them had spoken in quite some time. They had been slumped down on the floor of the bunker for much of the afternoon now, his head in his hands and his face hot with tears he was barely able to fight back.

She stared up at him with a cocky grin and a raised eyebrow. “Whatever your heart desires.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “My heart. That’s a good one.”

His world was broken and here she was smirking the day away, as ever. He’d known for about a week now that everything he’d fought for in his life was a lie. That he was… not a he, but a thing. Not Paladin Danse, but a machine. 

And yet she’d saved him. Georgia. What fucking luck that it had to be her. She looked remarkably, infuriatingly untroubled. No different than before, with blonde hair spilling over her shoulder in a messy ponytail and those self-assured, smiling eyes. Never once had she looked at him with the distrust or disgust he deserved. Staying there with him in the bunker and giving him sips of her Nuka Cola. Not even flinching when Maxson had followed them there, screaming for blood. Calling him off, keeping her cool. This woman wouldn’t stop haunting him.

This woman.

Which brought him back to his request. “I hate to ask anything of you,” he started. He kept his voice calm and even, but spoke through a telltale stuffy nose showing he’d been on the verge of tears. “You saved my life today, but I don’t even know what that means. I don’t know if I’m really alive. I don’t know when I was—when the Institute made me. I don’t know what’s real. I don’t know if I was replaced while I was serving with the Brotherhood here in the Commonwealth, or if I was planted in the Capital Wasteland. I’m grateful that you saved my life. But even still… I’m just not sure exactly what you saved.” 

“You want to see if I can scrounge up anything in SRB?” she asked, pushing herbangs, which were growing out into her eyes, out of her face.

“I—I feel horrible asking you to go in harm’s way. Especially after all this. It’s just that you’re the only one—you’re the only one who can get down there and come back in one piece.” 

“Sure, Paladin. I’d be dying to know, too.”

Paladin. It stung. “Please,” he said, “you can’t call me that anymore.” He stood up and walked across the room and began fiddling with his gun on the workbench.

“You do realize I said yes, don’t you?Hello? Danse?”

“Thank you,” he managed, unable to even turn around and look at her. “This is—I can’t explain—this is the most important—I need this very much.” God, he thought, what an ass she has to think I am. Always the military man, so by the book, stuttering like an idiot whenever she tries to talk about anything personal or crack a joke. Even now, even still, after all of this! Talking at her all the time about guns and ammo and combat tactics, knowing full well she’s as capable a fighter as he is. If only she’d known him when he was younger, when he was a cocky hotshot like her, when he could crack better jokes than that damned mercenary she’d been cavorting with, when—no.

If, not when, he reminded himself. It was if, now. 

When he turned around, half-hoping she’d be standing there looking at him, he saw her bent over the pot in the corner starting some kind of soup. That was kind of her—she recognized that he needed to be alone. He spent the rest of the afternoon touching up the new suit of X-01 power armor he’d found here, though he didn’t dare step into it yet. That feeling was a reminder of the Brotherhood, and too damn close for his taste. Buffing the plates brought some solace, and he let his mind wander.

He used to get under her skin. Probably he still did, but it was worse back then. He helped her out with some gear pretty early on when she first ran into him in Cambridge Police Station, on that first trip of hers to Diamond City after she’d left the vault. The whole way through ArcJet (the first of so many missions he’d dragged her on) she’d wanted to pistol-whip him in the back of the head, and maybe would have if he hadn’t been hulking above her in power armor. She told him as much later. And why wouldn’t she want to? He was curt and stiff and commandeering when she was at her most vulnerable. Even then, he was a first-class jerk and he knew it. Blundering, he tried to make amends by giving her Righteous Authority, which hung even still on her hip. When he handed it to her—a really generous gesture, one she hadn’t even realized the magnitude of at the time—he felt a care and concern incongruous with his gruff demeanor. He told himself she came back for safety—for his armor, his battle prowess, pure muscle, nothing more—but perhaps it was something else. 

He had dared to think so, sometimes. She sure as hell hadn’t given a hoot about the Brotherhood and its values, as much as he’d kept trying to convince himself that she was coming around.   
He supposed he could admit that now.

When the stew was ready, he saw that she’d laid out six different rifles and a whole stack of mods on the workbench. Maybe, she suggested, they could spend the rest of the evening doing a little tinkering. As the stew warmed his belly, he started to talk shop about the benefits and drawbacks of each mod on each particular weapon. He knew she’d done all of this for his benefit, but allowed himself, in spite of himself, to feel comfortable with that for just a moment. He even went digging around the bunker for materials to help her build a new scope for Righteous Authority. 

“Hey, Danse—“ she said as he was rummaging around, “I don’t know quite how you feel, but I can understand what it’s like to have your entire world change overnight. I’m here, you know. If you need to talk.”

His body stiffened. “Thank you, Knight. I appreciate that.” There he went with that damn stiffness again. Here she was, actually showing him tenderness, affection, empathy, and he couldn’t spit out more than a rote soldier’s response. The only response he knew how to give anymore, and yet he wasn’t even a soldier again. What was he trying to hide behind? “I found some duct tape over here,” he added lamely, t”hat should make enough adhesive for us to actually piece this thing together.”

“Yeah,” she said, “nothing works out here without that damn stuff. Let’s assemble this son of a bitch.” She was playing along. He’d blown it, but she’d excused it.

Soon, she excused herself, too, to the mattress in the other room. She’d already walked out the door before he could choke out the word—“Stay.” Better that way, he told himself, as he huddled up in the sleeping bag. There was so much yet he didn’t know, and that he wasn’t prepared for. So much to fear, but having her in the next room was, perhaps, enough. Someone in this world hadn’t given up on him.

That night he dreamed of a beautiful woman in power armor with no helmet. She overlooked a vast and desolate stretch of wasteland, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. He was careful not to walk too close to her. He wasn’t sure why, but he was sure that if he got too close, she’d fade away.


	2. Red Rocket

Georgia trekked to the old Red Rocket to dump some gear before heading to The Institute. She’d made it her home in this new world. Codsworth and Preston had implored her to rebuild her old home in Sanctuary, but the pain was too fresh. This whole world was different, and her home would be different, too.

Red Rocket was just right. Out of the way. Familiar, but not painfully familiar. With a little shack, a few suits of power armor, and a little garden patch out back, it was starting to feel like home. And, well, she’d opened it up to her best friend. When she wandered in, she found MacCready out back, tending to the vegetables. It was funny, seeing the tough-talking mercenary weeding the carrot patch, but he didn’t seem to hate it.   
  
“There you are,” he said, wiping off his brow— “I almost thought you forgot about me.”

MacCready was fun. A laugh. He’d been her buddy on the road for a long time, saving her ass on more than a few occasions. She’d hired him as a mercenary a long time ago to help out the Minutemen, but even then she’d suspected he was really just a lonely guy in search of a purpose. She gave him one. It turned out they’d had more in common than she’d imagined. He’d lost his family, too. But they brightened each other’s days.

“Remind me—who are you again?” she teased. “It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t think of it.”

“I’m Grognak the Barbarian,” he swaggered in a posturing baritone, “prepare to die!” Breaking out into giggles, she pulled him in for a hug. She smiled at the familiar smell of his sweat, the brush of his hair against her cheek. 

They’d been traveling companions, near-inseparable from early on. When she brought on the Paladin—no, Danse—things had changed. The two men had hated each other, and if their disastrous attempt at traveling together had gone on any longer, she was pretty sure one of them would have killed the other in his sleep.To MacCready, she’d offered her place at Red Rocket. His own place with food, defense, and her beloved German Shepherd.   


She figured it was only fair. Danse had his own home, his own brothers and sisters on the Prydwen. MacCready had no one, except for her. She felt a little guilty about leaving him here. It’d been a few weeks now, perhaps even a month.

“How long you stayin’?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

She had just planned to drop off her gear and relay into the Institute to grab a good night’s sleep in the cozy beds there, but seeing the look on MacCready’s face, she decided she’d wait till morning.

“Long enough for a few beers and a good night’s sleep,” she grinned.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

He stuffed some beers into his pack and they headed up the ladder she’d built to the roof, their favorite place to sit. There, they watched the sun set over Concord, and could make out the dim shapes of the Boston skyline beyond. He’d been ranging nearby, he said, helping the local folks for a cap or two. Nothing too challenging out this way, mostly raider bands and the occasional small pack of ferals. Easy work, easy money. Enough to eke out a living. 

And then the uncomfortable subject: what she’d been up to. She wanted to tell him everything, but she felt so ashamed.

“Give me another beer first, MacCready,” she sighed.

“Okay, boss, okay!” he chided, grabbing her another from his pack and cracking off the cap with his knife. “This better be interesting.”

“Well, it’s that if nothing else,” she conceded, and took a deep swig. “MacCready, you’re gonna judge me.”

“Well, that’ll be nothing new,” he said with a friendly elbow.

“No, really,” she sighed. “You know how I’m always getting myself into trouble? Well, this time I really fucked up. I got in deep with the Brotherhood.”

“Oh, Georgia, for f-for crying out loud. Those morons?”

“Those morons."

“Good grief,” he groaned. “Now I’m the one that needs another beer. Well, let’s have it.”

She began on the tale, which she was sure sounded nearly unbelievable. Secret schematics, subterfuge, poaching an Institute scientist, trekking to a forgotten nuke storage facility in the most godforsaken corner of the Commonwealth and maybe the world, working overtime to piece together some crazy prewar weapon of mass destruction.

And then Danse, God.

At that, MacCready’s face finally turned from incredulity to amusement. “Serves that stuck-up tin can right! Wow, what a load of bunk.”

“While there’s certainly an element of irony to the situation, surely you must feel for him a little, MacCready. Imagine your whole life, everything you once thought was real, suddenly taken from you.”

“I do know what that’s like,” he retorted, pulling out a cigarette “and for that matter, so do you.” Hands fumbling a bit, he lit it up. “Difference between us and him is we weren’t clanking militaristic pieces of sh—ugh, crap.”

“Clanking and militaristic he may be, but he needs help,” she responded, fishing a cigarette out of his pack for herself.

“Un-freaking-believable,” he said after a short silence. “We were doing great. We were making a real name for ourselves out there, raking in the caps, staying well clear of bu—crap like this. For once, things were finally going right, for both of us! Then you run into Mr. Tin Can and all of a sudden you’re off on dangerous missions, for no pay, for a bunch of idiots I know you know are idiots.” He was visibly angry now, maybe the first time he’d truly lost his cool with her. His brow furrowed. “Georgia, you have _nothing_ in common with those people.”

Drawing her knees to her chest, looking down, she whispered, “I know.”

“So what the heck? Why? Why any of this?”

She fished another beer from his pack. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me,” he retorted, his eyes burning with anger.

“Well, um, I guess—God, this is going to sound stupid, but he reminds me of Nate. A lot.” MacCready just stared. She couldn’t read his face. Some uncomfortable combination of sympathy and anger was flickering through his eyes, but he didn’t seem to have anything to say, so she pressed on. “When I first met him—a long time ago, before I even met you—I guess I thought that in a superficial kind of way. Tall, gruff, military guy with aggressive stubble and all that. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. But after finding out about the Institute and Shaun, I—I guess I wanted something left of my old life, and so I went back to find him to see if maybe I could feel something. And spending time on missions with him, it sometimes—it almost seemed like I had that back.” She was failing, now, at stopping the tears from running down her face.

“So you two are fucking, then?” asked MacCready, anger and maybe even jealousy burning through his voice. Her head snapped up. It was the first time she’d ever heard him swear without immediately correcting himself. He stared at her unflinching, eyes smoldering.

“What? No. He wouldn’t go for that. Against protocol.”

“Oh, _protocol_. Well, I’m sure now that the Brotherhood’s kicked him to the curb he’d make an _exception_ for you,” spat MacCready, his voice thick with vitriol.

She stood up, feeling the alcohol rush to her head. She refused to be spoken to like this—refused to take this shit from him. She wouldn’t, she didn’t have to, not after finally opening up to someone about these feelings for the first time. This stung. It stung hard. Maybe particularly hard because she wished he was right. Her mouth tried to open to find words. Looking down at him, he wore an unmistakable look of regret, but for once he couldn’t find words, either.

She walked across the roof, away from him, and pulled up her Pip-Boy map.

“Don’t, Georgia, I—“

She never knew how, or if, he ended that thought. In a burst of blue light, she was gone. Nothing but the red glow of the rocket above his head remained. 


	3. The Institute

The faint burning smell in her nostrils. The tingling sensation all across her skin. She’d only done this a handful of times and she sure wasn’t used to it yet. God, this fucking place. She still felt the alcohol coursing through her veins making her thoughts feel muddy and thick, her temper still reeling from MacCready’s provocation. What an insufferable, whiny ass. She knew she’d fucked up by getting in so deep with the Brotherhood, but the way he’d reacted was outrageous. She didn’t know what the hell his problem was with Danse, but she’d deal with that later.

Around her, placid scientist types milled about, barely having noticed her entrance. How may of them were synths, programmed to ignore any disturbance, she wondered? She sure as hell stood out in this dirty vault suit and ragtag scraps of armor.

_Well_ , she thought to herself, _time to take advantage of the one good thing the Institute has to offer me_ , and headed straight for the shower. She’d wept with joy the first time she stepped in an Institute shower. Functional plumbing, adequate water pressure, immaculate white walls and fogged glass. Those perfectly preserved showers were a vestige, maybe the last vestige, of what life had felt like in the old world. That first time, after meeting Father—she would never call him Shaun—and feeling like a hollow shell of a person, she stepped into the shower and felt in that moment more familiarity and joy than finding her son ever could have brought her.

When she’d been on the road looking for Shaun, she was sure she’d love him no matter what. Even when she’d been fooled into thinking he was a ten-year-old boy reared by the Institute, she was still sure she would find a way to be his mother. Nothing could have prepared her for what she found instead. Father. She came looking for the past, and she found it not in her son, whom she’d worked so hard to find, but in a sterile, impersonal shower. Memory could be funny like that. 

Stripping off her vault suit and turning on the water, she let it run over her hand as she tested the temperature. A familiar, cleansing ritual. MacCready had never done this, she would bet. Danse, either. The Prydwen showers were military-style, utilitarian. Just enough time allotted to get in and out, no time to test the temperature, letting precious, clean water run over the tips of your fingers.

As she stepped in and let the water run through her hair, it still felt thick with grease. She would cleanse herself of this grime and the anger running through her. The source of which was Robert Joseph _fucking_ MacCready.

God, MacCready. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was jealous—he’d certainly behaved that way. He was taking things okay until she started to talk about her feelings for Danse. Then he had bristled, as though in an automatic defense mechanism. But MacCready didn’t feel that way about her, and she was quite sure of that. They’d discussed it, after all, that one night in the abandoned house near Lexington. She smiled, thinking of that day. She and Mac had cleared out a whole apartment building full of raiders and were lugging a huge cache of ammo and a few bottles of whiskey. It was one of those days when neither of them could stop laughing and both were gunning down raiders with ease.

The air was full of testosterone and bravado, and when they found the abandoned house staked out by some Minutemen, they felt they’d really hit the jackpot. A safe place to stay the night on the road, neither needing to stay up and watch. “This General thing apparently has its perks, Boss,” he laughed at her. She was always complaining about the thankless job of being General, mostly helping petty farmers with ridiculous problems. But apparently it _did_ have its perks. They had a safe place to spend the night on the road, so naturally they opened up a bottle of whiskey in celebration.

Despite her anger at MacCready, she couldn’t help but smile a little as the water poured over her. God, they had fun. They were sitting cross-legged on the mattress, the bottle of whiskey, mostly consumed, next to them on the floor. He was bragging about his confirmed kills, telling her she’d never catch up with him, he’d been shooting super mutants since the age of ten. So she upped the ante, asked how many women he’d been with.  He’d had a few girlfriends as a teenager in Little Lamplight, but Lucy was the first woman he’d _been_ with, he explained. “Really, Mac?” she chided, “a hotshot like you’s only ever been with one woman?”

“You didn’t let me finish,” he said. No, there’d been a few Gunner girls, after he’d gotten to the Commonwealth. Aggressive, quick, no questions asked. One night stands, all. She’d never imagined that MacCready with all his swagger was so inexperienced. She laughed. She’d been with probably forty guys, between her mid-teenage years and mid-twenties. He was flabbergasted, thinking she’d just been this chaste suburban housewife.

“College was crazy,” she told him, quickly realizing  by the way he looked at her that he had no idea what she was talking about.

“God, you’re weird.” he’d said.

And then they were kissing. She wasn’t really sure how or who’d started it. She couldn’t remember it too well, really. Both of their mouths were sickly sweet, burning with alcohol, and he used too much tongue. Sloppy. She pulled a hand to his jaw to steady him, her thumb running over the prickliness of his short beard, the smallest moan beginning deep in her throat, and as soon as it began it was over. He pushed her away, gently but surely.

“Georgia,” he said, “what are we doing?” She’d just shrugged, or something, embarrassed. She couldn’t exactly play innocent; she’d thought about this. Her heart was in the past, firmly, but she wasn’t blind or delusional. He was cute, she was lonely, and with the two of them sharing the road together for so long, she figured something like this was eventually bound to happen. “I don’t—I don’t think this is a good idea,” he stammered, “not that I don’t think you’re se-pretty, but I, uh, I kinda can’t do this without thinking of Lucy.”

“No, yeah, I get it, Mac. I’m sorry. It’s weird for me, too.” Of course, that was a bit of a lie. She hadn’t had enough time to decide how she felt about it. Her heart had been pounding out a mix of alcohol and hormones and surprise.

He hiccupped. “That’s what I get for drinking too much with pretty women.”

“Yep, that’ll always get you in trouble,” she’d mumbled, then both of them broke out in giggles and seemed to manage to shake it off. They’d been through enough that one drunken, botched kiss wasn’t going to make or break them. But it did more or less extinguish the back-burner crush she’d had on him. The rejection hurt, more than she was willing to admit to anyone, and she supposed that was because it hardly felt like she’d even asked for it in the first place. She could have sworn, recalling the whole thing again in the shower, that it was MacCready who’d made the first move. He certainly wasn’t a passive participant, she thought, smirking at his aggressive and somewhat lackluster use of tongue. But he’d made himself very clear in drawing a line, of that much she was certain. He had no right to be jealous of her having feelings for someone else, and even less of a right to be such an asshole about it.

Of course, she thought, this wasn’t about MacCready at all. It was about Paladin Danse. God, the stupid things she’d do for affection—affection she was pretty certain wasn’t reciprocated. _I’m sensing a theme here, Georgia_ , she thought to herself. She’d fallen for him hard, in spite of herself. When she was fresh out of the vault on her way to Diamond City and ran into him at the Cambridge Police Station, she felt that dizzy feeling in her gut, as if she were falling endlessly. Nate had sent a photo of himself from Anchorage in a suit of power armor, and Danse looked like he’d walked right out of the photograph. He was different enough to convince her she wasn’t seeing a ghost—his brow a bit thicker, his voice a bit deeper—but he was close enough that she swore any common sense she might have had flew right out the window as soon as he started speaking to her. He’d even convinced her to go on a wild goose chase to some place called ArcJet that was crawling with synths, to which she’d stupidly agreed. She would have agreed to do pretty much anything he’d asked. There was something so calming in his voice, even as he droned on about protocols and creeds. It was just what Nate would’ve done.

That was the first of many stupid things she’d agree to do because of him, but after that first mission, she tore herself away. The resemblance was too painful, and she still had so much work to do. Looking for Shaun had been her singular purpose. But since the day when that dream faded to nothing, the day when she stood for hours under the warm, running water of the shower, she yearned, suddenly and deeply, for him. Seeking him out and going on those missions together, no matter how questionable or harebrained, made her feel alive, as though there was some force left running through this world connecting her to before. Closing her eyes, letting the water run over her, she imagined the warmth of his body beside hers. Danse’s body, though since she didn’t know it firsthand, she was sure in the back of her head she was also thinking of Nate. She imagined running her hands up his broad chest, up all the way through his thick, dark hair. She imagined him pulling her closer, his huge hands exploring her body now. A finger brushing over her nipple, firm beneath his touch.

Really, it was her touch, her hands drifting over her breasts, she thought what a shame it was that no one was there to touch them. She was so sensitive there. She exhaled deeply, remembering the many nights Nate had teased her relentlessly just by touching and licking her nipples, pinching and biting as she grew more aroused until she begged him to fuck her. He’d reach down to feel her, slick and dripping without even having been touched yet. _Not Nate_ , she thought, _think of Danse, Danse’s fingers learning how much you want him, Danse’s fingers brushing against your lips and finding the small protrusion of your clit… imagine him pressed up against you here in the shower, his cock growing hard against your stomach._ It didn’t take long now for her to work herself into ecstasy, feeling the warm water, the current running through her shaking limbs, her deep and powerful tightening.

Afterwards, she felt dazed, featherweight, clean. Looking in the mirror, she saw herself clean for the first time in weeks. Her nipples, her vulva, her lips, were all reddened with arousal. If only Danse could see her, could see how desperately she wanted him. If only he wanted her back. She’d get a good night’s sleep before doing any recon, she decided. She owed herself that much.

 


	4. The Answers

The soft white sheets weren’t quite like what Georgia had back at home, but they could almost feel like it with a little stretch of the imagination. She felt clean. Normal. Almost happy. But of course she wasn’t just here for a shower and a real bed. She was here for Danse. As much as she loved these tiny remnants of the comfort of home, it was in her best interest to get the hell out of here as soon as possible. The place creeped her out, and so did Father. The name alone… _God_ , she thought, _what a fucking twisted world I woke up in_. 

Georgia was pretty sure most people here were not thrilled to see a wastelander like her allowed to have free reign of the place. She was also pretty sure that anyone who was excited to have her here likely harbored motivations to turn her into a science experiment, being the 200-year-old novelty that she was. After all, they’d done it before. But Father seemed to have power over them, and that gave her a certain power as well—a power that pretty much allowed her to do what she pleased without being questioned. She’d scavenged up packs full of arcane instruments for valuable scrap and nosed around in most of the terminals without anybody saying anything. She doubted a little more snooping would get in anyone’s way. She hadn’t seen mention of Danse on any of the SRB terminals, of course, but there was the chance she’d overlooked something, or—unfortunately—that no record existed. She’d have to find out. She dressed herself in an Institute lab coat, leaving the vault suit and armor behind. Better to try and fit in, at least for today.

SRB was full of assholes, more so than anywhere else in the Institute. She looked for Justin Ayo first thing on her way in and made sure to seat herself at the terminal farthest away from him. Total vindictive creep, and one who’d love to get his hands on Danse. Nothing on the terminals—strike. But she managed to sweet-talk a gen-2 synth on the staff into letting her into an old records closet. The place was cluttered with holotapes. Shutting herself in the small room, she began on the top shelves and decided to work her way around each row from left to right. M7-97. That’s what she was looking for.

It reminded her of her days as an attorney. Her first shit job out of law school—doc review. Combing through files, prying for anything that might be legally significant for a case. The files were disturbing—synths seemed to have been escaping and going rogue nearly as long as they’d been made. Countless innocent people killed and replaced by synths for the sake of a simple science experiment. The whole thing was repulsive, really.

It hadn’t occurred to her, until she started reading these reports, that she might not like what she found out about Danse. His being a synth certainly surprised her, but it hadn’t really _bothered_ her—she was much more disturbed by the Brotherhood’s incomprehensible and, frankly, inhumane treatment of him once they’d latched onto the intel. She’d spent enough time devouring sci-fi shows as a teenager and met enough synths in the Capital Wasteland that she didn’t see any meaningful difference between a synth and a human. She’d even worked as a hired gun for the Railroad a few times—they were all pretty kooky, but had good hearts.

But what if the real Danse had been murdered and the one she thought she was helping had only been around a few months? Weeks, even, perhaps?

No, she thought. That didn’t add up. If the Institute had planted Danse that recently, there was no reason there wouldn’t be record of him on any of the SRB terminals. Unless he was some horrific black ops project of Justin Ayo’s… _dear God_ , she thought,  _please let me find something in here, anything to stop my mind from racing to places like this._ And sooner than she’d dared hope, she found it. A bundle of holotapes with the label “Capital Wasteland 2276-78” with entries by a Dr. Zimmer, whom she recalled to be the mysterious “actual head” of SRB she’d heard referred to. Out on some recon mission right now. There it was—hope. D.C., ten years ago. Danse would have been in the Capital Wasteland then—at least, he was supposed to have been. Surely this was it.

The files on the tapes were, she gathered, with regard to a recon operation on an escaped synth called A3-21 carrying valuable information. The Railroad seemed to have gotten him as far as the Capital Wasteland. The mission had been personally authorized by Father. Must have been damn valuable information, she thought, to warrant such a dangerous trip. Too valuable to list in these holotapes, anyway. Eventually, she found, working through the tapes, he tracked A3-21 to a place called Rivet City, where he seemed to lose the synth’s trail.

Rivet City was where Danse had been living when he joined up with the Brotherhood, she was fairly certain. This had to be it—but she was running out of tape. Only one left and—god damn it, the stupid thing was encrypted. Thank God that Valentine had managed to teach her a thing or two about hacking. It wasn’t easy, but she managed to get the thing to crack for her before it locked her out. _Damn, Georgia_ , she thought, _you’ve come a long way_. 

And here it was.

 

PERSONAL LOG, DR. ZIMMERMAN

*****

The Capital Wasteland is an abominable hellhole. The Institute cannot civilize the Commonwealth and it certainly can’t hope to do any good here. Worse, the trail on A3-21 has been cold for months now. Most likely, the unit has been terminated somewhere. On the chance it is still operational, it is highly unlikely that I will still be able to find it. My time is wasted on this wild goose chase. There are pressing matters in the Commonwealth that require my attention.

And still, it has pained me to think that this journey has been for nothing. While I have given up hope on the recon mission for A3-21, I will not give up hope on the Institute. Father will not approve of what I am about to do, which falls beyond the mission’s directive—admittedly far beyond it. But the Institute has ambitions that fall far beyond the provincial scope of the Commonwealth. Father knows it, even if we don’t always agree on our methods of pursuing this goal. 

Today, I have made my small contribution to those ambitions. I was accompanied to the Commonwealth by a garrison of twenty synths who performed their guard duties admirably. The Wasteland is dangerous and I should not wish to endanger my person, but by my estimation the a synth or two should not compromise my own protection given their sheer ability and numbers. As such, I am depositing third-generation unit M7-97 here, in the Muddy Rudder bar in Rivet City. Given that there are gen-1s and 2s in my garrison, all the synths have made camp outside the city and would not be recognized within it.

I have uploaded unit M7-97 with a generic orphan scavenger memory profile. I have done my best to update this profile with geographic data from my travels through the Capital Wasteland, so the unit may plausibly believe it originated here, and it will wake up with what it thinks is a hangover. The unit has been left with enough caps to make do in Rivet City, for now.

Officially, M7-97 was killed in the line of duty. But in the eventual and inevitable event of the Institute’s expansion across the Eastern seaboard, M7 should prove a valuable source of intel. I am making this record so that, in the event of my death, M7 is not forgotten.

*****

 

Well, there it was. She stood up, quickly. No one would miss this holotape. No one had looked at it in years, perhaps ever, given the dust on it. But she had her answers, and she was ready to take them to her Paladin. No, Danse—screw it. Her Paladin. She still loved the sound of it. She wasn’t sure what the answers meant, but she felt sure that they were the only way for Danse to move forward. She knew what that was like, at least—needing answers to move forward. She only hoped these answers would not hurt him as much as Father had hurt her.

She pulled up the relay on her Pip-Boy, not willing to spend another second in this place. She pulled up the coordinates for Listening Post Bravo, and felt herself drown in blue light.


	5. To See You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally all sorts of Danse backstory, and fast-approaching sexy stuff!

Danse was on the floor doing pushups when she found him, in the basement of the bunker. He was wearing just a pair of army fatigues with no shirt on. Time seemed to hover, and she couldn’t be sure how long she stood there. MacCready, when he’d been traveling with her, had made sure to walk around shirtless at almost any opportunity where it seemed remotely safe, but she had rarely even seen Danse out of his power armor—if he needed to change fatigues, he’d always made sure to do it out of her sight. But here he was.

His body was different than she had imagined. She’d always been imagining, well, Nate. Danse was paler—walking around all day in a suit of power armor would do that to you, she supposed—but also broader and more defined in the arms shoulders than she had imagined, with a tapering waist. For perhaps the first time she was able to see him not as some ghostly vehicle for her dead husband but as his own person.

“Danse.” She finally managed to say his name, still standing stupidly at the top of the staircase. He sprung to action, as though prepared for an enemy attack. My _god_ , she thought. This was a beautiful man. His torso sloped down from his broad shoulders to a hard, defined stomach. A trail of dark hair grew thick below his navel. _Stop staring there, Georgia_. His face flushed, though she couldn’t tell whether from exercise or embarrassment. Knowing Danse, embarrassment. He’d turned into a stuttering beet-red mess any time she’d even tried to flirt with him, out on the road.

“Kn-knight,” he managed. “Thank you for returning.”

“Oh please, Danse,” she chided. “Will you ever call me Georgia?”

This time he definitely reddened from embarrassment. “Thank you. Georgia.” Her name sounded odd coming out of his mouth, even to her. It’d been a long time since he’d been on a first-name basis with anyone. He scrambled though his pack for a t-shirt, which he pulled over his head.

“I found your answers in the Institute” she said, “but I need to ask something of you before I share them.”

“Just let me know what you require, Kn-Georgia.”

What she really wanted to say was, _Please promise you won’t blame me for whatever it is I turned up. Please don’t turn away from me, not after all of this._ What she said was, “Look, I’ve had a strange time looking for this and I—Danse, I have shared so much with you in our time on the road and on the Prydwen. You know my whole life story, my whole damn sob story. All I have is this little piece of yours on a holotape. If I share this with you, I don’t want any more of this Brotherhood ‘I don’t think this is an appropriate question’ bullshit. We are no longer the rank and file in someone else’s army. We are just two people out in the wastes, trying to survive. Please let me into your head.”

“Not two people,” he replied softly, looking at the ground. “A person and a machine.”

_Not this shit again._ God, she wanted to scream. Keep your voice steady. “We’ve been through this. You are no different than anybody else. Besides, whatever or whoever you think you are, I just did you a _really_ big goddamn favor, so I’d appreciate a simple yes or no here.”

A protracted silence.

“It’s about time I spoke to you like a person, Georgia. These years with the Brotherhood have clouded my head. I can’t promise any of it will be easy for me to talk about, but I owe it to you to try.”

Georgia unclasped her Pip-Boy from her arm. “The holotape loaded in here has all the information I’ve got. I’m going to step outside for an hour. When I get back, you and I are going to talk about this. Okay?”

Danse gulped. “Thank you, Knight. I don’t know—I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

She took one last look at him before she headed up the stairs. “You could start,” she said, taking one last look at him as she walked up the stairs, “by calling me Georgia!”

God, she hoped whatever she found ended up being good news. She supposed it probably could be worse. At the very least, there wasn’t a Danse out there who’d been killed and replaced. He was, more or less, his own person, at least he had been for the last ten years or so. She climbed up to the roof and fumbled through her pack for a cigarette. It was a habit the Paladin didn’t care for, but she’d picked it up on the road with MacCready and had taken to the occasional smoke to soothe her nerves. In any case, Danse wasn’t coming anywhere near her for a while.

She stared out at the wasteland sky, its impossible bluebell blue. Who’d have thought that the sky could be so bright and pure after the nuclear apocalypse? No more pollutants, she supposed. No more smog. Nothing was ever as it was, but sometimes, she thought, that was a good thing. She’d never known such a sky as anything more than a fantasy, a painting—yet here it was, spread out before her. And then there was Danse, down below somewhere. Pacing? Weeping? Sitting? He thoughts drifted to him standing there shirtless, as impeccable and impossible as the afternoon sky. She imagined tasting the sweat on his skin, the brush of his stubble against her— _knock it off_. You need to keep a clear head. Could be anything out here.

There was nothing anywhere on the horizon, though, as far as she could tell. It wouldn’t surprise her if Danse had picked off anything nearby. As she stubbed out her cigarette and contemplated going for another, she heard rustling down below and scrambled for her rifle. It was Danse. What had it been, ten minutes?

“Uh, hi, I’m up here,” she shouted down.

He looked up at her, with a full grin. “Hey, _Georgia_ ,” he said. Damn. Had she ever seen him smile like that?

“So…” she said from up on the roof, “good news, then?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”

She shimmied down the ladder to the ground. Meeting her at the bottom, he pulled her into a tight embrace. She felt time become muddy and slow. Was the Paladin really holding her? Was he _laughing_? Was he—holding her up in the air? _Spinning her around_? Before her mind had the chance to quite catch up with reality, he’d set her down on the ground. Happiness transformed his face. His smile was wide, generous, infectious. “What do you say I make us some dinner? I have some Radstag meat I can throw on the hot plate.”

They headed back down into the bunker, and Danse, still seemingly riding his high, began to talk to her as he heated up the plate.

“For so long,” he said, “I was burdened by my past. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t speak about it. That’s part of why this has hit me so hard. It’s more than losing the Brotherhood, it was the thought that my own memories, the ones that have haunted me for years, weren’t my own. That they were all just some cruel artificially implanted joke. And I—for the first time in years it isn’t painful to think about, or even speak about. They may be bad memories, but they’re _my_ memories. I don’t know if you could understand that. I don’t think it’s something I could have understood until I had to face the very real possibility that none of it was mine.” He threw the meat on the the hot plate with a smoky sizzle.

“What kind of memories do you mean? Can you tell me about them now?”

He sighed. “I don’t know where to begin. I was so young then—I mean, was I young? I guess I thought I was twenty or so. A kid, really. I’ve aged though, that much is obvious. Why? I didn’t think synths aged.”

“Some models age like people,” she replied. She knew more than she cared to on the subject since she’d snooped around all the Institute terminals for intel. “Usually ones they have out for deep recon, ones they’re meaning to leave there for a while. Since it seems like that was Zimmer’s intention for you, I’m guessing you’re one of them.”

“Huh, aging robots,” he said. “The things people will dream up. At any rate, I was about twenty, or a guy who looked and felt it at least. What were you like when you were twenty?”

Flashes of college parties, binge-drinking, crazy haircuts… “Um, less responsible than I am now,” she said, “let’s leave it at that.”

He grinned up at her, “I know what you mean. I was twenty in every way.I spent all the caps I earned in Rivet City at the bar, the Muddy Rudder—the one Zimmer dropped me at. When I met Cutler, I’ve told you about Cutler—we had a damn good time. You know, like young dumb guys do. We would drink till we were cut off at the Muddy Rudder, then wander up to the upper deck and perch on the rail trying to snipe mirelurks with rusty old rifles. It’s a miracle neither of us ever fell to our deaths.”

She laughed at the thought of Danse as a drunk college-aged kid. It was tough to imagine. “Really? You?”

“Yes,” he said— “like you said—less responsible than I am now. It was all one big testosterone-fueled mess. When the Brotherhood came through, Cutler and I thought joining up would be a nice way to impress some girls. We were surprised when they actually took us on. They must have been desperate to go after a couple of boozy slobs like us. But when they took us on, we did really well. I was willing to work hard, even if I was just trying to be tougher than the next guy. But that wish to be tougher than the next guy actually took me pretty far. I was promoted to Knight very quickly.” He pulled the meat off the grill and as they ate he told her stories of ridiculous bravado, pranks, things she never could have imagined her stone-faced Paladin Danse doing in a thousand years. Stuff they could have probably had a good laugh doing together.

He’d been more like her. Roguish, sarcastic. In the Brotherhood for the guns and armor, not for the ideology. After eating, he pulled a bottle of whiskey and a couple of coffee mugs out of his pack, pouring a generous amount into each of them. The two of them sat back against the wall together, knees pulled up to their chests, much like they had the afternoon she’d saved Danse from Maxson.

  
“This is going to be harder to talk about,” said Danse, “but I’m trying to remember that at least all these memories are my own. Besides, I promised you I’d talk.”

“That you did.”

“We’d had a very successful raid on a mutant stronghold one day,” he said, drinking deeply from his mug of whiskey. I’d been with the Brotherhood maybe a year at this point—Maxson was just a kid back then. A bunch of us had gone out there and risked our lives to make the Capital Wasteland a safer place. It was a proud moment, you wouldn’t understand unless—well, maybe you do understand, after all you’ve been through. I’d done very well, record confirmed kills. Spirits were high. I’d just been given my own small chambers in the Citadel, finally got out of the rack with all the new recruits, and after having a few drinks I went back to my chambers to sleep. But I’d hardly gotten out of my fatigues when the door opened, and it was Sentinel Lyons standing in my door.

“The Elder? The one from before Maxson?”

“No,” he chuckled softly, “That was Elder Lyons. This was Sentinel Lyons, his daughter,” he explained. “Sarah. She was something like… I don’t know how to describe her. She was the Elder’s daughter, and of course that gave her certain privileges, but she was a formidable fighter   in her own right and a brilliant tactician—probably the best the Brotherhood’s ever had. She commanded her own elite squad called the Lyons’ Pride—“

At this she cut him off with laughter at the silly name.

“Yes, that’s the type of person she was, too—cocky, assured. It’s always been an ego-driven world in the Brotherhood and she had an ego as big as anybody’s. She was also… beautiful. It sounds trite but I don’t know how else to explain. She was this gorgeous, powerful, confident woman, who as far as I knew didn’t even know who I was, and there she was standing in my door as I stood there half naked. And, uh, I suppose you can probably piece together what happened after that,” he trailed off, gulping his remaining whiskey and reaching for the bottle to pour some more.”

“You guys totally boned!” laughed Georgia, amazed and a little enthralled at the idea of a young Danse being seduced by this sexy hotshot officer. The whole scenario was a bit of a turn-on, actually.

“Your powers of deduction are formidable,” he retorted with a smirk. “Yes, somehow she spent the night there with me, and from then on I was an absolute fool for her. You know, I… it wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted her before, sure, _everybody_ had, but in the way that you want a prewar pinup girl. You never think for a moment that you’re actually going to…anyway, it went to my head that she wanted me. I don’t know how it couldn’t have.”

“So was that it? Or were you two… together?”

“If only it had been that simple. She wasn’t the type to settle down. She had several men going at once and I—in love as I was, I don’t think I was ever even fooled into thinking I was her main lover. Truth be told, I know now that I was an afterthought to her, probably, just a young, stupid piece of ass. But she did keep coming.”

Georgia snickered, and Danse’s signature ruddy blush filled his cheeks. “You know what I mean.”

“I _sure_ do,” she laughed.

“In any case,” he continued, rather more darkly, “I spent that year in thrall to her. I was… with her at my side, I felt… powerful. I felt complete. I’m sorry. It’s still difficult to—this is the first I’ve spoken about her in years.”

“I’m sorry, Danse,” she said, feeling a little regretful about her stupid jokes.

“She—one day, they brought back her body.”

“Oh, Danse. I’m so sorry.” She could feel the deep hurt in his voice.

“It’s not the same, but I—I think you might know what I mean. One day you’re lying in bed together, laughing, then you wake up one morning and see her corpse. I didn’t—it was all such chaos after that. I honestly didn’t know where to find any sense in the world anymore.”

“I know what that feels like,” she replied quietly.

“If I didn’t have something to anchor me, I don’t know if I would have survived. But the Brotherhood was there, and after that day I _committed_. No more antics. It kept my mind off the grief. I was a good solider. An outstanding soldier. Even if they won’t have me now, I was that. Once.” It came as a shock to her that the Paladin had known grief like this. Perhaps he was more like her than she’d ever known.

“I don’t know what to say, Danse, I—“

“I’m not finished,” he said, eyeing the bottle but seeming eventually to decide against more. “This isn’t easy to say. For years, I managed to keep the pain far away. There were days when the grief would begin to creep in, but there was always a training exercise or a mission to stave it off. Then one day stationed out on a recon op here in the Commonwealth, I found—well, I found you. But when you ran into the station blasting ferals left and right, I thought—I thought you were—“ he trailed off. Decided to take a swig of whiskey after all. “You looked so much like her.” Time slowing, again.

Danse looked over at her, making real eye contact for the first time in this conversation, his brow furrowed, his deep brown eyes vulnerable. “I should have sent you back out to the wastes. You were a spooked, inexperienced vault dweller. Instead I asked you to come to ArcJet with me. I even gave you my best damn rifle. Even then, when you were so green, you were still just so—I don’t know. Strong. Funny. Capable. I could barely look you in the eye, but I could barely let you go. When you walked off to Diamond City I damn near abandoned my post to escort you there personally. I was afraid—I was afraid that I might never see you again.”

Her mind swam with a thousand thoughts. The ludicrous notion that Danse saw _in her_ his dead lover, just as she saw hers in him. The ludicrous notion that Danse felt uncomfortable around her. The realization that this hulking, frowning soldier was just a heartbroken troublemaker inside. She couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. There was so much, but nothing that seemed an appropriate follow-up.

“I’m relieved beyond explanation,” he finally said, “that at least these memories are my own. That everything that’s mattered in my life has been my life and not the life of some man I’ve replaced. Painful as it is, at least I know who I am. I have that. Unfortunately, I’ve also lost just about everything that’s ever mattered to me.”

“Do I matter to you?” she blurted out, immediately blushing at the selfishness of the question.

Danse sighed, a hint of a smile playing at his lips for the first time since he’d been telling stories about his early days in the Brotherhood. “Yes,” he replied. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but decided against it.

“You haven’t lost me,” she replied, locking eyes with him. Her heart was pounding now and her stomach was churning with adrenaline. Was this it, the moment she’d been craving? Was it even right for them to touch each other now, given the ghosts hovering in the room? How was it even possible that this superlatively handsome man would want her? Should she lean in and kiss him? Was he going to lean in and kiss her? Was nothing going to happen at all? Did he see her as anything more than the second coming of his lover? Did she care?

Through all the questions came one image, the image she’d seen when she walked down into the bunker earlier that day. Danse, half naked, his rippling muscles, his gorgeous body— _his_ body, not Nate’s. In front of her had been a person all his own. As much as she was a person all her own. Instead of leaning in, instead of drawing away, she stood up, barely believing what she was about to do. The slight buzz of whiskey through her limbs wasn’t enough to account for the insanity of this.

She walked out a few paces in front of him and turned to face him. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. Her hand found the zipper of her vault suit and began to tug at it. Pulling it down, all the way down. She opened her eyes to look down at Danse. He stared at her, eyes lustful, transfixed. She stepped out of each leg. Breathe, she thought, remember to breathe. Neither dared speak a word. Reaching behind her back, she unclasped her bra, letting it fall to the floor. Trying hard to resist the urge to look away in shame, she maintained eye contact. A deep, shuddering breath ran through him. _Oh my god._ Spurred on, she slipped her thumbs into the sides of her panties and gently pulled them to her ankles, kicking them off one foot onto the ground.

Her blood coursed with the strangest mixture of shame and arousal. She’d never felt fully comfortable exposed like this, but kept thinking, _maybe he will see me as I am_. Wanting to reach back for something, anything, to cover the extra padding she’d always carried around her hips and had never managed to shed. The freshly formed scar on her thigh where she’d been mauled by a Deathclaw. But then there were his eyes, locked onto her, lustful. The heady swarm of emotions drew her to step towards him. To lower herself downward, to straddle him with her naked body.

She was overcome with a surge of sensations. Her knees and feet on the cold concrete floor on either side of him. Her legs meeting where his legs met, the hardness of his cock stretching the fabric of his fatigues and her softness gently resting on top. The rough fabric of his fatigues on the sensitive tip of her clit. Her breasts pressed against his chest. His heart pounding. Her heart pounding. The intensely vulnerable, strangely erotic sensation of being completely nude with a fully clothed partner. And now, his hand running through the hair on the back of her head. His hand pulling her in now, closer, closer.


	6. Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, and I thought that writing sexy stuff would be the easy part! Still have no idea what I'm doing. But hey, at least they've gotten this far?

His mind was screaming a thousand things at once, but they all crashed like waves against his searing physical desire. The words that might have come out moments ago were forgotten, irrelevant. All that mattered now was her, her soft weight perched on top of him. Her eyes locked onto his—fierce and vulnerable all at once. Her bare nipples grazing his chest, and _holy shit_ , she’d settled herself right on top of his cock, gently shimmying down onto his lap until she found the shaft of his already hard cock pressing through his fatigues with her hot, soft little mound. Her lips parted and her stare was an invitation, hell, her whole body was an invitation that he had no power to resist. 

It was only once he’d pulled her in and touched his lips to hers that a jolt of fear and embarrassment swept through him as he recalled he hadn’t kissed a woman in years. But the jolt lasted only a moment and then he was lost in her kiss. Her mouth was incredible, like nothing he’d ever felt before. Her lips were soft and felt plush against his, her tongue luxurious as it met his. His hands ran over her back, her waist, her breasts, her perfectly preserved vault skin inciting the most primal urges in him. His cock was already throbbing. Again, a bit of fear—he could already tell that wherever this was going, he wasn’t going to last long.

She didn’t need to say it, but she did, flexing her lower back a little to press herself a bit harder down onto him, as she leaned over to whisper in his ear, “I’m all yours.” Danse couldn’t manage anything but a moan in response, but this seemed to spur her on. She raised herself up slightly on her knees so that she wasn’t pressed directly against him anymore, and grabbed his hand in hers. Could she tell his hand was trembling? She guided his hand between her legs and to her _fucking incredible wetness_. Her soft lips were impossibly slick, her whole mound now impossibly slick as he explored it with his fingers, spreading her wetness. She moaned, her whole body responding to his slightest touch there. She leaned in to whisper again, her breath catching in her throat a bit now, “Can you feel how wet I am for you, Paladin?” _Oh God._ Could he help being insanely turned on by that? That he didn’t feel a hint of shame at hearing his lost title come out of her mouth? She seemed to sense his heightened arousal and rewarded it with the cutest little smirk and deep kisses on his neck. “Paladin,” she made sure to start this time, “would you like me to suck your cock?”

_Oh god_ , he had to manage words now. The answer was of course, yes, a thousand times yes would I like to feel that hot, luxurious little mouth all over me. But there was no way he’d manage to last through that, and there was no way he wasn’t going to fuck her soft, dripping little pussy tonight. He needed to fuck her. He needed to fuck her.

He needed to speak. How not to sound ungrateful that this beautiful woman wanted to put her mouth on his cock? She always seemed to know the right thing to say, while he struggled to find words. _Come to your senses, Danse_. _She’s stripped herself naked while you’re still here in fatigues because she wants you to be in control. You can do control. It’s what you do best. Speak_.

“No,” he said, surprised at the authority with which he managed it. “I want you flat on your back, Knight.” Good God, had he really just called her Knight?

But instead of scoffing, she stood up immediately, standing up straight, stiff. Just the slightest smirk at the corner of her lips. “Yes, Paladin.” She walked over to the sleeping bag a few paces away from them, and laid herself down on top of it.

“Now spread your legs,” he ordered.

“Yes, Paladin,” she replied, spreading herself for him. She was gorgeous. His prewar pinup. His Knight. His Georgia. His beautiful, naked woman in front of him, begging to be fucked. But enough. Enough with the charades, with these control games, with this teasing. He tore down the zipper of his fatigues,released himself from his briefs, and thrust himself on top of her. 

“Danse,” she moaned, guiding his cock into her with her hand and angling her hips to take him. The incredible tightness and the incredible heat were nearly too much to bear. Inch by inch, as slowly as he could manage, he worked himself into her until he was buried to the hilt. After that it was nothing but rhythm and pleasure. Thrusting harder into her now. She was screaming his name and as she began to shudder around him he—barely—brought himself to pull out and spill himself on her stomach in a few short bursts. He rolled off of her, closed his eyes, barely there, barely in this world at all.

When he opened them there she was with her face and lips flushed, her long, blonde hair spread out everywhere underneath her, and, holy shit, his come splashed all over her stomach. He’d barely lasted a few minutes, he was sure. But before a deep blush could fully overtake him, she turned to speak to him.

“Hey,” she said.”

“Hey.”

For a while they regarded each other, running their hands lazily over each other’s bodies, discovering all the spots they’d missed during their first frenetic fuck. That lovely, lazy moment held within it the place after angst, after lust, where nothing needed to be said or done at all. And they let it guide them into sleep, together.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I've never done this sort of thing before, but I played too much Fallout, then discovered this site and found it really fantastic, then, uh, I accidentally a fanfic. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I hope it's enjoyable! It has been fun for me.


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